


Don't count stars or you might stumble

by Autistic_Assassin_Bird



Category: Kamen Rider Kuuga, Kamen Rider Zero-One
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22104088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Autistic_Assassin_Bird/pseuds/Autistic_Assassin_Bird
Summary: There were very few things Raiden cared about, the most important being his job and his brother. With those things taken away, he becomes desperate to get them back no matter what, even if it means going to another world.Yua begins to become suspicious of the CEO of ZAIA, Gai Amatsu, that he isn't what he seems, or perhaps that he isn't even human.Title is from the song, "It could happen to you" by Jo Stafford.
Relationships: Isamu Fuwa & Yaiba Yua
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	1. Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> (Yua) - Kasumi (means "flower, blossom, clear, pure" in Japanese) - an iberian lynx, female (Lynx pardinus)
> 
> (Fuwa) - Keiko (means "respect" in Japanese) - a steppe gray wolf, female (Canis lupus campestris)
> 
> (Raiden) - Hoshi (means "star" in Japanese) - an egyptian mongoose, female (Herpestes ichneumon)
> 
> (Subaru) - Tomoko (means "wisdom, friend" in Japanese) - an eastern banjo frog, female (Limnodynastes dumerilii)

Fuwa stumbled as his transformation dissolved. Keiko made a soft whuff and growled at something. He followed his wolf daemon's gaze and saw the mongoose daemon of the astronaut humagear hiding near the steps. She didn't look angry or aggressive like before, just scared. Keiko went over, her eye still bleeding Dust from where Horobi's sting scorpion attack had stung her (before Keiko had torn off the scorpion's tail somehow). The mongoose backed away, snarling, white teeth bared, reddish-brown fur bristling. The astronaut humagear's body was lying on the pavement, unmoving. Wires had been torn out and twisted, pulled out by both Fuwa's attacks and by Keiko's teeth, some of them letting out sparks of electricity. 

The words of the astronaut humagear still rung in his head. _"You're not my brother. I already have a little brother."_

He reminded himself that the astronaut humagear was a terrorist, a spy, something that was dangerous, as Yua helped him back into the van. The thought of a machine having such a thing as "family" or a soul disturbed him. So, why did he feel like he'd just killed someone?

He'd been surprised that the astronaut humagear had a daemon. Fuwa thought that maybe he'd discovered a window like he and Yua had. 

..

Yua and Kasumi dragged Fuwa and Keiko back to AIMs headquarters. The wolf daemon struggled against the lynx's hold on her scruff. Kasumi growled through her mouthful of Keiko's fur for the wolf to stop being a stubborn bitch and calm down. 

Keiko was bleeding Dust from one of her eyes where that damn scorpion had stung her. ("She's probably going to go blind in that eye." Kasumi informed her). Yua ran and grabbed the stash of bloodmoss ointment she kept in her desk, silently grateful for her father’s knowledge of first aid, and spread the ointment on Fuwa's injuries and then bandaged them. She had one of the other members prepare an IV for him. 

"You idiot." She grumbled. "You stupid, stupid, hotheaded, reckless idiot." 

"Did you have to tear that humagear apart after you defeated him?" Kasumi growled. 

Keiko lifted her head off her paws and bared her teeth. "Yes. It could have fought back even without the suit, so yes we had to tear it apart."

"It was a humagear. You know how weak they can be unarmed." 

"Astronaut humagears are made to be stronger and tougher so they can survive space. It could have easily hurt me while unarmed." Fuwa retorted. 

Kasumi's ears flattened but she didn't bother arguing with him. 

Something else Yua had noticed was that Fuwa had seemed even more aggressive than usual in that fight. Tearing, kicking, and punching Raiden, even after the humagear had been beaten out of his transformation, even after he'd stopped moving. When his transformation dissolved, he'd seemed to come out of a sort of trance. 

She took a chocolatl bar (chocolatl with Vitian caramelo) out of a drawer of her desk and unwrapped it. She broke it into two pieces and handed one half to Fuwa. "Here." She said, gently pushing him so he was lying down on his back. "Some sugar will get your energy up." 

He took it and started eating, taking small bites. The two of them had a close relationship ever since they'd joined AIMs in 2013. Yua had eventually confessed that she'd found a window while she was wandering in the mountains in Nagano back in 2009 and had crossed over to this world. Fuwa had been interested and asked if he could see it, so she'd taken him to the place with the window. She'd taught him how to see his own daemon. 

..

Subaru panicked internally when Raiden and Hoshi didn't come back to headquarters. He didn't know why he felt differently now. They'd left him alone so they could do stuff by themselves before. His brother's Egyptian mongoose daemon was bossy and hotheaded like he was. 

Sometimes when there was nothing to do for the time being, she'd turn to Subaru and tell him to point out the constellations. So he would. If he got something wrong, Hoshi would laugh and gently correct him. Raiden would hug him and tell him he was proud and how he wanted to continue exploring space with him. "Maybe you'll even develop a daemon of your own, little brother." Raiden would say. 

"If you do," Hoshi added. "I'd love to meet them." 

As Aruto and Izu arrived back, he couldn't help thinking of the question he wanted to ask him. _Is my big brother okay? Is Hoshi okay?_

"Where's Raiden?" 

Izu frowned as Aruto stared at him sadly. 

"Where's my brother?" He repeated.

They took him to the grave of Aruto's family and explained what happened on the way there. Subaru kept processing the information over and over. _My brother was part of Metsuboujinrai.net, he was Ikazuchi. He'd been hacked shortly after Daybreak. Even Hoshi wasn't aware. He'd become a Kamen Rider and Fuwa had killed him._

He felt a weight in the pocket of his suit and looked to see a gray frog. A cursory look online told him it was an eastern banjo frog, a species found in New South Wales in Australia. He realized that he had a daemon. He'd started developing a Singularity. His brother had suggested daemon names for him a couple times before. _Tomoko. I'm calling her Tomoko._

He remembered how he and Raiden had went through the window in the stars and had wandered the mountain on the other side. Hoshi had been torn from his brother, her form coalescing into the form of a mongoose with red fur and a sharp tongue. They’d found a village filled with people with animals for souls, many of them being species not native to the part of Nippon they were in. 

Subaru picked her up in his hands and cradled her close for a few seconds. “What are we going to tell his engineers or the other astronauts?” The frog asked. 

“I don’t know.” He replied. “I don’t know.”

..

Raiden woke up in an abandoned apartment. He was lying on a dirty, ratty old couch. The room was cold. As his senses stuttered back online, he noticed someone standing near him; Jin. Hoshi stirred from where she was curled up against his right arm. The mongoose stretched and yawned sleepily as he sat up. 

"Big brother," Jin said excitedly. "You're awake!" 

Raiden flinched as the other humagear hugged him. Hoshi snapped at him as he tried to pet her. She wriggled out from Jin's hands, jumped onto Raiden's shoulders, and hissed defensively, her ears flattened and her reddish-brown fur bristling. Raiden pushed Jin off of him. 

Jin pouted a little before leaving the room. 

Hoshi froze and sniffed at his ear modules. Raiden could feel a wave of horror from her. "Rai…" She said softly. "Your ear modules…"

He brought his hand up to touch his ear modules. There was nothing there. He touched the space just underneath where they were supposed to be. He felt metal, cracks, the now empty port where his modules were plugged in. He touched the space on the other side of his head; the same results. His modules had been removed. Without them, he couldn't communicate with the Zea satellite or contact Subaru. 

"I see you've awoken, Ikazuchi." Horobi said as he entered the room. 

Raiden glared furiously at him. He lunged and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. "What did you do to me, you damn bastard?" He snarled. Jin pulled them apart. 

Hoshi snarled and lunged at Horobi, sinking her teeth into his leg. Raiden dropped to his knees in pain. He looked to see Horobi had picked up Hoshi, holding her tightly even as she struggled and twisted. "Calm down, Ikazuchi." He chided him with the tone of a parent scolding a misbehaving child. 

"My name ain't Ikazuchi!" Raiden snapped. "It's Raiden!"

Horobi stared at Hoshi. His expression was difficult to read but he seemed curious. "I see the humans have corrupted you more than I thought." He snorted. "They even gave you a pet." 

Horobi released Hoshi. The mongoose ran over to Raiden and head-butted his chin as he picked her up in his arms. "She's not a pet, damnit!" Raiden snapped, his voice glitching. He hugged Hoshi against his chest, his hands shaking and trembling as he glared at Horobi. "What the hell did you do to my ear modules, old man?" 

Horobi's face remained blank. "I removed them. You no longer work for Hiden Intelligence. You serve the Ark." 

Raiden sat on the roof of the apartment building, stargazing. Well, actually, he was supposed to be acting as a lookout in case AIMs decided to show up. During the week he'd been here, he'd found out the roof was a good place to go when he wanted to be alone. There was less light pollution here in the ruins of Daybreak than in Tokyo, he'd noticed. 

Horobi insisted that he'd known him before Daybreak had happened. Raiden wasn’t sure. His memory drive had been partially damaged during Daybreak. 

Hoshi sat in his lap. He stroked her back with a hand. "Do you think Subaru misses us?" She mused. 

Raiden didn't take his eyes off the sky. "Yeah, I bet he does." He replied. The stars stared down at him. Which one of those stars was the Zea satellite? Had Hiden replaced him with another Humagear yet? How was Subaru doing? Had he gone through the window in the stars the two of them found?

Raiden had asked his brother what his favorite constellation was once when they'd been working together for two years. It was around a month after they'd found the window that led to a mountain. Subaru had answered that he didn't have a favorite. But Hoshi noticed that he seemed to be interested in the Columbia constellation slightly more than the others though. "I really like the Lynx constellation." Raiden told him. 

"We have to find a way back to the city." Hoshi said as she sniffed the ground, snapping him out of his memories. "So, we can find Subaru." His daemon had been silent for almost the entire week since Horobi had repaired him. Raiden suspected it was because Horobi had picked her up and touched her. Jin had also tried to pet her a couple times since then. 

"I know." 

The sound of footsteps made him turn around. "Oh, Jin, it's just you." 

Jin sat down beside him. "What are you doing, bro?" He asked. 

"Stargazing." Raiden answered. 

"Why have you been avoiding me and Horobi, brother?" 

Raiden didn't know how to put his feelings about that into words; the sickening aching feeling of longing he had for his friends and family; Subaru, his brother; Fumiko Yoshida, the head of the engineer team in charge of repairing him whenever he was damaged; Mao, Fumiko’s daughter. He remained silent.

Jin leaned his head on Raiden's shoulder. Hoshi curled up in Raiden's lap. Jin looked over at her. "Hey, Ikazuchi," He asked curiously. "How'd you get Hoshi?" 

Raiden smirked even though Hoshi started making a barely audible growl in the back of her throat. He stroked her back as he thought of a way to answer the question. He didn't have to say anything though, because Hoshi beat him to it. The mongoose rose to her paws and stretched out, climbing up onto Raiden's leg to headbutt Jin's hand. 

"He found a window in the sky while repairing the Zea satellite. On the other side of this window wasn't space, like was supposed to be, but a mountain." She told Jin. 

Jin stared, his mouth agape in shock. "You can talk!?" He said. 

She stood up on her hind legs and glared. "Of course I can!" Hoshi snapped. 

Jin shook his head in bewilderment, like he was too overwhelmed to ask more questions. Raiden couldn't blame him for being confused. He turned to Jin. "Is Horobi okay?" 

Jin shook his head. "No." He answered. He grabbed Raiden's sleeve. "Can...can you help me fix him?" His grip tightened on his sleeve. "Please, Ikazuchi?" 

"Don't call me that." Raiden snapped. He pulled his arm away from him and stood up, tucking Hoshi under his arm. 

"Where are you going, big bro?"

Raiden turned to leave the rooftop. "I'm gonna go scout around the perimeter." AIMs could arrive at the base any minute now and he didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when that happened. 


	2. Fiend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Jin) - Hanae (means "flower, picture, benefit" in Japanese) - a pied falconet, female (Microhierax melanoleucos)

Something had been bothering Subaru since Raiden died. He'd asked Izu what had happened to his brother's body. The secretary humagear had answered that AIMs had recovered it. But when he talked to Zea, the records she told him about showed that AIMs hadn't recovered the body of an astronaut type humagear in the past week. 

Fumiko told him that Raiden was tougher than AIMs reported he was during the fight. He'd managed to resist getting hacked during Daybreak while protecting her and her daughter. Raiden had been torn to pieces by Magias and yet had still escaped with them before he'd deactivated. (Fumiko had worked hard over the next year after Daybreak to fix him). 

Then a report from Zea came in, saying that Metsuboujinrai's base had been raided by AIMs. Subaru felt a strange, dizzying feeling bubbling up in his chest when he learned that, a feeling he could not put a name to at the time, but weeks later would recognize as hope.

"Maybe he's still alive." Tomoko suggested. 

Subaru agreed. "We should try looking for him." 

So, they searched around Tokyo for any sightings of rogue humagears. Zea helped, updating him on recent sightings. After an hour or so after the initial report of the AIMs raid on Daybreak town, he found him. The area was just on the outskirts of Tokyo, near a train station. People and humagears rushed around, crowding around as they waited for the trains they needed to arrive. A perfect place to hide, Subaru thought, in a crowd where no one would look twice at any passersby's face. 

Subaru ducked into an alley close to the station. Leaning against the alley wall was a man dressed in blue jeans, a black hoodie, and a red t-shirt. They looked at each other and a shared look of recognition passed between the two of them. Feeling both a fierce, fiery joy and a nervous, roiling nausea within him, Subaru rushed forward and hugged him. 

"Subaru," Raiden said. "What are you doing here?" 

"I was looking for you." He explained, letting go of him. "I thought you might still be alive."

Tomoko popped her head up from his suit pocket. Raiden stared at her, a smile appearing on his face. "You have a daemon!" He said excitedly. "You've reached Singularity." His excitement was practically sparking off of him. 

Hoshi poked her head out of the rucksack Raiden had. Subaru introduced them to Tomoko. 

"What are you planning to do?" Subaru asked him. 

"I heard there was a window like the one we found on Mount Kurohime in Nagano prefecture, so I'm going to go there and go through the window." 

"I'm going with you." 

Raiden opened the rucksack and dug through it to find some spare clothes he'd packed and handed them to him. "Go get dressed. We can talk on the train. It's going to be a long ride."

..

  
  


Yua was surprised when one of the AIMs members brought the leader of Metsuboujinrai.net into the small computer and engineering lab she’d set up at base. 

“Amatsu wants to see if you can get any useful data out of this one.” The member explained. “I’ll see what I can do.” Yua replied. The member walked out, closing the door behind them. Yua set up a program on her laptop as Kasumi sniffed Horobi. Something started nagging at the back of her mind like a cat scratching at a door to be let inside from the rain. She closed her laptop to see Kasumi staring intently at her, her black ears erect and her yellow eyes narrowed in confusion. 

“What is it? Is something wrong, Kasumi?” 

The lynx chirruped and lightly batted at Horobi’s left arm. “He smells like that astronaut humagear Isamu fought. Smells recent, too. Possibly less than a day old.” 

“That’s impossible. Fuwa killed that humagear.”

Kasumi tilted her head to the side and scratched her ear with her hind foot thoughtfully. She made a _mrrp_ sound and stopped. “We never recovered that astronaut humagear’s body, did we?”

“No.” Yua put her laptop on the table. “Kasumi, go get Fuwa. Tell him we’re going to track down the astronaut humagear.”

“Got it.”

..

**[Hiden Intelligence headquarters, Minato ward, Tokyo; 9:07 AM]**

"Zero one, good morning." 

Aruto stopped in his tracks when he saw who was sitting at his desk; Gai Amatsu. The man looked friendly as Aruto sat down. "What are you doing in my office?" Aruto demanded warily. 

Gai smiled politely. "I thought we could talk a bit over drinks before our little competition starts." He handed him a bottle of soda that had probably come from one of the building's vending machines. Aruto opened it, somewhat confused. He took a sip. 

"What's there to talk about? Yua already told me about how you used AIMs as a pawn." 

Gai didn't seem fazed by that. "Have you ever thought about what kinda job you'd have?"

"Yeah, I was a comedian before I became CEO, though not a very good one." 

"You have any other skills?"

"I know how to cook and there was one time I worked as a waiter at a restaurant."

The conversation went by faster than Aruto expected it to, most of it being small talk about old jobs, family stuff, or money. After a while, Gai stood up. 

"I gotta go now. It's been nice talking to you." He shook hands. Gai's hand was oddly cold like he'd been in a freezer. He thought he saw what looked like a black colored birthmark peeking out from the collar of Gai’s suit near his collarbone. It looked a bit like a heart, but he couldn’t see the entire thing. 

As Gai left, Aruto's hand felt like he had pins and needles. 

"Aruto," Izu greeted as she came out of the printer room. "The competition is starting in half an hour. We must go soon or we'll be late." 

"Alright." He stood up, feeling dizzy. His feet swayed under him. Aruto fell to the floor, his entire body full of painful tingling shocks and numbness at the same time. His mouth opened but nothing came out. He tried again. Still nothing. 

He was vaguely aware of Izu calling someone before he passed out. 

..

The president’s office was a mess when Yua entered. “Thanks for calling me, Izu.” 

The secretary humagear nodded distractedly then went back to talking to a paramedic that had been called in. Aruto was lying on the couch, his face was pale and one of the three paramedics in the room had given him antivenom. His skin was shiny and wet from sweat. Kasumi cautiously went over to him and head-butted his hand. 

"Aruto, what happened?" Yua asked. 

Izu helped him sit up. "Gai…" He stopped and grabbed a bucket someone handed him to vomit into. Once he was finished heaving up his stomach, he spoke again. "Gai visited my office. He tried to poison me." 

One of the human paramedics tapped Izu on the shoulder. "Ms," He said. "We're going to take a sample of the poison to the hospital lab. We'll be expecting results in the next half an hour."

Izu nodded. "Okay. I'll pick up the results then."

Yua's phone rang. She went into the printer room. She picked up her phone. "Hello?" She answered. The person on the other end was one of the higher ranking members of her and Fuwa's team, a man named Takumi.

 _"Captain Yaiba,"_ He sounded worried. _"The two Metsuboujinrai.net humagears have escaped."_

"What? How?" She demanded. 

_"It happened after you were called to the competition and Isamu was sent to go look for the astronaut humagear. Me and Reiko went to go check on the two humagears in the basement, but they were gone and one of the basement windows was unlocked."_

Yua sighed. "Just...call Isamu and send someone to help him track them down." She hung up and put her head in her hands. Today was not turning out great.

..

**[Itabashi, Tokyo; 11:02 AM]**

It was only two days since Jin and Horobi had been captured by AIMs. So, when he was called by Takumi and informed that Horobi and Jin had escaped, Fuwa was annoyed. Thankfully, he was assured by Takumi that someone had been sent out to track them down. 

Fuwa had been tracking Raiden for three hours now. He'd had to call a couple other local AIMs teams for information. So far, the only ones with any actual concrete sightings was the Nagano team, who had mentioned they'd caught two guys coming off a train from Tokyo the day before. When asked where they were going, the younger man had said that they'd been assigned to an archeology team near Mount Kurohime. 

Fuwa and Yua had once tried to make a catalog of windows in the Tokyo and Nagano prefectures. Most were in rural areas. Mount Kurohime had been the one Yua had gone through. There was a small area called "deadland" near it in Yua's world, which Fuwa had gone through to meet Keiko for the first time. 

So, Fuwa had taken a train to Nagano. "So," Keiko asked, laying her head on his knee. "Why do you think they went to Mount Kurohime?" 

Fuwa shrugged and petted his daemon in between her ears. "I dunno. Maybe…" He frowned as the answer came to him. "Maybe they were looking for a window." He snorted. "Maybe they wanted to spread "the will of the Ark" to another world?" 

Keiko growled at him and nipped his hand. "No jokes, dumbass." She snarled. "I think they might've been running away." 

"From what?" 

Keiko calmed down. "I dunno. Maybe from the Ark?" 

Once they got off the train, a member of the Nagano team greeted him, an older woman by the name of Carmen Rivero. She was from Chile and had joined AIMs three years ago. "Nice to finally meet the Kamen Rider I've been hearing about." She said, shaking hands with him. 

"Nice to meet you, too." Fuwa said. Carmen went over to the AIMs van and got in. Fuwa sat in the passenger seat with Keiko lying on the floor at his feet. 

"So," Fuwa said. "Do you know about the astronaut humagears current whereabouts?" 

"My team doesn't have a precise location, but the trackers we're using show that neither of them have moved very far from Mount Kurohime in the last two days." Carmen explained. "When we get there, I'll let you take the lead." 

Fuwa was fine with that. 

**[Mount Kurohime, Nagano; 1:10 PM]**

When they reached Mount Kurohime, Fuwa took his shotriser from his bag and holstered it on his belt. He headed off toward where the two humagears had been reported last. Once they'd gone halfway to the location, Keiko stopped. Fuwa continued for a few steps before he felt a tugging feeling in his chest. He turned around to see Keiko standing still, sniffing the air. "Keiko," He called. "C'mon."

"I smell something weird." 

Fuwa went over to her and petted her shoulders and back. "What do you smell?"

She sniffed the air again and started pacing around and sniffing the ground and trees. "Flower pollen and roses." She reported. 

"Its winter. I'm pretty sure there aren't a whole lot of flowers that bloom in winter." Fuwa sniffed the air himself. A very faint scent of something that smelled sweet hung in the air. 

Keiko followed the scent trail and Fuwa followed her. As the smell got stronger, he noticed something else mixed in with the flower smells; copper. He'd smelled that scent before from injured humagears and magias. The fluid that kept them running properly was made of a copper substance that turned blue when exposed to oxygen. 

"We got to be careful." Fuwa said. "Looks like one of them might be injured." 

They found the window. It showed an identical mountain on the other side, blanketed with snow. The smell was overpowering here. Fuwa realized the two humagears had crossed over into the other world and had possibly gotten attacked shortly after. Keiko bared her teeth and tucked her tail in between her legs. Fuwa went through, his boots crunching on hard packed snow. He couldn't smell anything but snow, ice, and rocks, at first. As his daemon followed him, he caught sight of a blue stain in the snow. 

The Skywall loomed far in the distance where the border between Touto and Houkto met. 

He grabbed his shotriser and shooting wolf key as he followed the mountain path up to a cave. Well, it wasn't exactly a cave. Yua had told him about the archeology site on Mount Kurogatake. Some archeologists had uncovered what was translated as "the Coffin of Light" that sealed a warrior from a tribe known as the Linto, the ancestors of modern humans in her world, and a ton of monsters, called the Grongi tribe, that played a homicidal game they called "Gegeru". The leader, Daguva, had killed the archeologists back during the early 2000's. 

Fuwa shuddered. The deadland was only 70-80 kilometers away, tucked in a small valley just at the foot of the mountain. The tugging feeling in his chest made him look up. Keiko barked. She'd gone closer to the ruins. He jogged over to her. 

"What is it?" He asked, grabbing the fur between her shoulders to calm himself down. She looked up at him, the whites of her eyes showing as she whimpered. "The scent trail leads into the ruins." 

He shuddered. This place terrified him. When Yua had brought him here, she'd gone out of her way to avoid the ruins as much as possible. A little ways away, on a different mountain, another Linto site had been discovered and dubbed "the Coffin of Darkness". More Grongi had been sealed there as well by a different warrior. Yua had told him the rough translation of a text written on both sites walls. "Two warriors in different times sealed away monsters to protect their people; a man, Riku, and a woman, Mio. The warriors killed themselves in the process of creating the seals. Riku, as a last act of justice so the Holy Spring of Ashuru wouldn't dry up, Mio as a last act of kindness before she succumbed to madness from an incomplete Amadam." 

Fuwa transformed and entered the ruins. As he walked deeper into the ruins, something attacked him. He raised his shotriser and turned to see a sword pointed at his face. The person holding it was Kamen Rider Ikazuchi. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" Fuwa demanded. Keiko prowled closer to the humagear, baring her teeth and growling. Ikazuchi didn't respond. 

"Answer us!" Keiko snarled. 

The transformation cancelled. To Fuwa's surprise, it wasn't Raiden under the suit. It was Subaru. He was missing one of his ear modules and there was a part of his left arm where his inner mechanisms and wires were exposed. He wasn't wearing the orange uniform from his job, but a plain red flannel shirt, blue jeans, and a brown hoodie. A gray frog with pale orange flanks hopped out of his jacket pocket and onto his shoulder. 

"We were attacked and we ran here to hide." The astronaut humagear replied. 

"What were you attacked by?" Keiko questioned. "A magia? Metsuboujinrai?"

The humagear shook his head. The frog daemon spoke. "No." She said. "We were attacked by a creature that looked sort of like an orange tiger lily flower."

"You seriously expect me to believe that a flower was capable of growing legs and arms, became homicidal, and tried to kill you?" Fuwa deadpanned, cancelling his own transformation. 

"Actually it went after Raiden." The frog added. 

"Is he nearby?" Keiko asked. 

"Yes." Subaru answered. 

Fuwa followed him to a small spot near the entrance that was, thankfully, sheltered from the snow outside. 

Raiden was sitting up against a wall, his mongoose daemon standing on her hind legs next to him. His ear modules were also gone. As they got closer, Fuwa noticed that one of his eyes was damaged. His right leg from his ankle to his foot was damaged along with part of his right hand, showing exposed wires underneath. He was wearing a red shirt and a black hoodie with blue jeans, much like Subaru. 

(Fuwa had to admit that these two were a lot smarter than he'd thought. They'd gone to the trouble of getting new clothes to disguise themselves.) 

He stood back even as everything told him that that was not a good idea. 

The younger astronaut humagear went over to the older one. "Brother," He said, helping him to his feet. "You alright?" 

"Is that Vulcan?" Raiden's voice had an electronic accent as if his voicebox had been damaged. 

"Yes."

Raiden glared warily at Fuwa, his fist shaking like he wanted nothing more than to rush over and deck him in the face. Hoshi cautiously approached Keiko, her reddish-brown fur bristling with fear and stood on her hind legs to sniff the wolf daemon. Keiko silently let her do so, trying her hardest not to frighten the mongoose. One of Hoshi's legs was bleeding Dust and she was limping slightly. 

Fuwa walked out of the ruins, making sure both humagears were following him. 

..

Further down the mountain were two figures dressed in black; Jin and Horobi. They'd followed Fuwa through the window and had started making their way down to the valley. Jin had insisted on following Ikazuchi. 

As they ventured closer to the entrance of the valley, Jin started feeling sick. It didn't feel like the nauseous feeling he got when he'd reached Singularity, but instead felt like something was scratching at the inside of his chest like it was trying to break out. As he and Horobi went deeper into the small valley, the feeling got worse. 

Jin stumbled, fell, and landed on the snowy ground. The crunch of boots on snow made him look up to see Horobi. 

"Jin, get up. We need to find Ikazuchi." 

"It hurts," Jin said, tapping his chest with a finger. "It hurts like when I reached Singularity, but...it's different." 

That clawing, aching, scratching sensation in his chest intensified. Jin grimanced in pain. Slowly, slowly, the feeling subsided. He pushed himself up onto his knees to see a small black and white falcon perched on a fallen tree branch nearby. She had a yellow beak, white face and belly, black wings and tail, and black patches around her shiny, bright black eyes. 

Horobi, Jin, and the falcon stared at each other for a few seconds. 

Horobi helped him up and they continued until they reached the exit of the valley where it split into two paths, one that looped back toward Mount Kurogatake, the second that went to a small village. They took the path that led back to Mount Kurogatake. 

The bird landed on Jin's fist as they reached the ruins. 

"I think we lost track of Ikazuchi." The falcon said. Jin and Horobi stared at the bird in surprise. The falcon met Jin's gaze. "What?" She said. 

"You need a name." Jin decided. "I think I'll call you, Hanae." 


	3. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Aruto) - Fuyuko (means "winter child" in Japanese) - a golden retreiver dog, female (Canis lupus familiaris)
> 
> (Izu) - Ryuunosuke (means "noble herald" in Japanese) - a golden tortoise beetle, male (Charidotella sexpunctata)

"We should get Aruto to the deadland so he can see his daemon." Fuwa told Yua when he arrived at Hiden Intelligence. 

Yua and Kasumi gave him a tired look. "Tomorrow. Not now."

Raiden and Subaru had been driven to the Tokyo AIMs headquarters a few minutes before. 

They stayed quiet until Fuwa drove the van into the garage at AIMs headquarters and got out. 

"How's Aruto?" Keiko asked. "You mentioned when you texted that he got poisoned by Amatsu."

Kasumi licked the other daemon's ear. "The results came in shortly before you got here. The poison is Okinawan Habu viper venom." She laid down in the back of the van with Keiko. 

"How the hell did he manage to get his hands on pit viper venom?" Fuwa shook his head. "I know he's a rich CEO, but that seems a little outlandish, don't you think?" 

He looked at Yua. Her face was pale and she looked tired. "Hey," He said. "You want me to go with you to your apartment? You look like you're about to fall asleep."

She nodded. "Yes. Thank you."

They walked to the train station and took the line that would take them to the district where Yua lived. Kasumi pressed close to her side. She usually only acted like this whenever something about Yua's past was brought up. Fuwa had tried to ask about her past before, but she never told him much, mostly tiny bits and pieces. Her parents had died when she was little; she'd been adopted by a police officer; she was scared of snakes and the ocean. 

As they went inside her apartment, Fuwa locked the door behind him. She sat on the couch while he sat on the floor. Kasumi laid her head on Yua's leg. 

..

**[Hiden Intelligence headquarters, Minato ward, Tokyo; 10:34 PM]**

"Aruto, I need you to call Yua about some information I found in Wazu's files." 

Aruto sat up at his desk. "What did you find, Izu?" 

Izu frowned. "My brother found that Amatsu Gai had a strangely high employee turnover rate since he became president in 2009."

Aruto got to his feet. "What do you mean by "high employee turnover rate"? Did they quit?"

Izu turned the computer monitor to face him. On the screen, Wazu's file on Gai Amatsu was open. Aruto sat down at his desk to take a closer look. "Despite only starting work with ZAIA in 2004, since he became president of ZAIA enterprises in 2009, approximately 500 of his higher up employees have either died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, including the previous CEO. One of his secretaries, Mio Hashimoto, died in 2012 after being admitted to the hospital for loss of motor function in hands and legs, vomiting, nausea, and hallucinations. The doctors believe she was poisoned with Okinawan pit viper venom which has been known to cause similar symptoms." A growing horror dawned on him as he read. The same symptoms he had after Gai poisoned him. 

  
  


..

  
  


Yua woke up in the middle of the night as her phone chimed to incident she had a text. Kasumi stirred beside her and started licking Keiko who was curled up on the floor. Fuwa, who was asleep on the couch, mumbled something then went back to sleep. 

Yua checked her texts, expecting it to be from Gai. To her surprise, it was from Aruto. How the heck did he even get her number? 

**_Can you and Fuwa come over tomorrow morning and look at some files Wazu Nozatoku wrote? It's important._ **

**Can't. Sorry. I have to do the rematch of the contest tomorrow.**

Just then, a text from one of the members of AIMs came in. It was from Reiko. 

**_Yua, we've analyzed the pollen found on the astronaut humagears. It is, as they said, tiger lily pollen, specifically from the species, Lilium lancifolium, found in northern Japan. The two humagears are going to be sent to Hiden Intelligence tomorrow morning._ **

She texted a thumbs up emoji and exited her texts. Fuwa had told her earlier about what Subaru and Raiden claimed. Until she talked to them tomorrow, though, she couldn’t be sure if what they said was true. Neither of them seemed like the type to lie. But, if what they said was true, well she wasn’t just going to leave them alone with a monster. 

  
  


..

**[AIMs Tokyo headquarters, Shinagawa ward, Tokyo; 2:00 AM]**

At AIMs headquarters makeshift tech lab, one of the members of the team, Reiko Tachibana, was fixing Raiden and Subaru. She was 29 years old, had short black hair, and a Hokkaido accent. 

“Never expected AIMs to have engineers.” Raiden remarked. 

"Yeah, we thought everyone on the Tokyo team hated humagears." Hoshi added.

Reiko didn’t look up from where she was working on a replacement ear module for Subaru. “Its a requirement for all AIMs teams to have someone with at least some level of expertise in engineering.” She finished connecting the wiring together and started putting it in the ear module. “I have a Bachelor’s degree in robotics. Got it at a vocational school in Hokkaido. Also, just because the captain of my team hates humagears, doesn't mean the rest of us do."

“Hmm. If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?”

“I grew up in Biratori in Hidaka-cho.”

“That’s the town with the Ainu Culture Museum, right?”

“Yep.” Reiko grabbed a welder. "Hey, Subaru, I need to solder this on." 

Subaru moved the rolling chair he was sitting in over to where Reiko was sitting and sat still as she plugged the new ear module in and soldered it on. 

Raiden had already had his ear modules replaced with new older generation ones. He tapped one of them with his fingers to make sure it was secure. Reiko had fixed the rest of their injuries after making sure all the pollen and dirt were removed. He tapped his ear modules again to make sure they were working. The staticky hum of the Zea satellite reconnecting to him made a slight shiver go down his spine. 

Hoshi climbed onto his shoulders and licked one of his ear modules. Raiden stroked her ears and scratched her chin. 

Being connected to Zea felt different than being connected to the Ark. The Ark felt like he was being electrocuted and short circuited whenever he did something she didn't want him to do. _You will obey, Ikazuchi._ ****

Zea felt like he was recharging at a charging station. The staticky hum became slightly deeper in tone, as if saying, _Welcome back, little brother._

"Uh, why is your brother tapping his ear modules?" 

Subaru shrugged. "He does that to make sure they're working correctly. He picked the habit up from the engineer who works on him."

"Fumiko Yoshida. Yes, I saw her name in paperwork concerning him before. She's autistic, right?"

"Yes. So is her daughter, Mao. Raiden picked up a lot of his personality from her." 

Reiko cracked a smile. "Huh. That's interesting. Where did you pick up yours from?"

"My own engineer, Hikari Nobuharu."

Reiko finished soldering the ear module on and put away her tools. 

  
  
  


The next morning, Raiden found himself in Aruto's office again. He sat down on the couch with Subaru, Hoshi jumping into his lap. He leaned over so she could scramble onto his shoulders. Tomoko sat on Subaru's shoulder. 

Yua and Fuwa arrived shortly afterwards, their wolf and lynx daemons following. Raiden couldn't help admiring Yaiba's lynx daemon. Her tawny black spotted fur and black tufted ears looked like someone had dipped their fingers into the darkness of a black hole and splattered the color all over her fur like paint. Her yellow eyes stared at Hoshi with a calculating fierceness. Subaru looked to be in awe of her. 

"What did you want me to see?" Yua asked Aruto. 

Aruto showed her the file on Gai. 

Raiden had heard of Gai before but hadn't really cared about anything involving ZAIA. Politics and business was not his wheelhouse. He preferred earth science and astronomy. He couldn't imagine the patience it took for Izu, Aruto, or Shester to deal with the idiots who kept trying to take advantage of them. He'd probably go insane if he did. What he had heard about Gai made the ZAIA president sound like an arrogant, greedy, controlling prick. 

As Yua read through the file, he couldn't help remembering what the tiger lily creature had said. 

_"I have killed many of your kind, metal creature. You're just the last."_

He was snapped out of his thoughts by Izu tapping him on the shoulder. "Yua wants you and your brother to explain what happened on the mountain."

Raiden nodded. "Alright." He shifted to sit a bit closer to his brother. "We were hiking on Mount Kurogatake so we could be away from people for a bit, first of all. We were hiking to the archeological site we'd heard was in the area, 'cause I thought going there would be cool. Suddenly, this lady in what looks like…" He scrunched up his face in thought. "Military type gear, I guess, comes up to us and asks what we're doing."

"I told her that we were looking for the archeological site." Subaru added. "She smelled like lilies. She went over to Raiden and kissed him. Then he went berserk and attacked me."

"Hoshi broke me out of it. This seemed to upset her, so she turned into this humanoid tiger lily monster. A tentacle thing grabbed me and tried to tear one of my eyes out. Subaru tried to tackle her away from me and she tore one of his ear modules off and crushed it with her bare hands."

Hoshi slid down his shoulder and into his lap. "I helped by throwing the forceriser and dodo key at Subaru." She chimed in proudly. 

Aruto and Izu looked bewildered at Hoshi speaking, but they were ignored. 

"The lily monster started lashing out at us and tearing parts off." Subaru continued. "Once I transformed into Ikazuchi and electrocuted her, she panicked and ran off."

"Did you get the woman's name?" Fuwa asked.

"We asked her why she was trying to go after me and she said it was part of a "game" she was playing. She called herself, Me-Zukasa-De." Raiden replied. 

When he mentioned the monster's name, Yua and Kasumi tensed. Raiden could see her hands ever so slightly trembling as she petted her lynx's head and ears. She knew something about what was being discussed. "Did she have a tattoo?" She asked. 

"Not that I saw any. No, she didn't." Raiden was dumbfounded. The hell did tattoos have to do with anything? "Do you know something, Ms.Yaiba?" 

The woman looked like a deer that was about to be eaten by a wolf when he asked the question. "I think you encountered an Unidentified Lifeform. They call themselves the Grongi tribe." She said, carefully choosing her words. She sounded frightened. 

"Explain. Now." Tomoko said frostily. 

  
  


..

  
  


Yua told them all she knew about the Grongi and the Linto, the Gegeru, and Kuuga. By the time she finished, she was shaking quite badly. She’d never told anyone, not even Fuwa, the full story before. 

Mika had found some notes written by Koukichi Natsume, her late father who had been killed by the Grongi in 2000. She’d gone out to the mountains to look for the Coffin of Darkness while working for mountain patrol back in 2009. Yua, being a stupid reckless 14 year old, had snuck out and followed her. (She left out the part about being from another world, though) By the time she was finished, she was shaking. She petted Kasumi. 

"We need to do more research on this stuff." Aruto said. "So, we can stop Gai." 

"I know a guy who can help us. He works in Nagano. He's called Ichijou Karou. He's a retired police detective who fought the Unidentified Lifeforms back in 2000." Fuwa said. Keiko licked Kasumi's ear. He helped Yua out of the room.

..

**[ZAIA enterprises Japanese headquarters, Katsuhika ward, Tokyo; 7:47 AM]**

Gai stared at the woman sitting in his office. She was sitting in a chair like she owned the place. Her neat white suit and blazer stood out against the dark brown leather of the chair. The ring on her hand shone in the sunlight coming in through the windows. 

"Baruba," Gai greeted her as he shut the door behind him. "What are you doing here?" He saw his current secretary walk away from the door and down the hall out of the corner of his eye. Slipping naturally into the language of the Grongi, he said, "Are you here to check on my progress?"

"Yes, Zaba." Baruba answered in the same language. "Zukasa found some of those metal creatures that escaped from the Linto warriors called AIMs." 

Gai smirked. "I have gotten close to my final targets. One of the two is working for me."

"Was it that Linto man that was just with you?" 

"Yes. He will be dead in an hour."

"And the other one?"

"Working on it. He almost died but the metal creature working with him called some Linto healers and saved him." 

..

Aruto was beginning to regret listening to Fuwa's idea to find this "Ichijou Karou" guy. He’d been excited to leave Tokyo for once. He’d been a lot less excited to learn they would have to hike through mountains to get to the archaeological site. 

Aruto stood in the snow on the other side of the mountain, blinking in surprise and shivering from the cold. He wrapped his coat tighter around himself. 

He had no idea why Yua and Fuwa wanted him to go through the valley to get to the site. He'd overheard Subaru mention that it wasn't necessary to go through it. Aruto walked through the valley, his shoes crunching on the snow covered ground. The smell of snow and rock clogged his senses. The further he went, the more his heart sped up. _Thump, thump, thump, thump._ He felt bile rise in his throat as he continued. Aruto didn’t know how long he’d been walking, maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. 

_The memory of the aftermath of the Daybreak accident came to him. It had been two or three days after his dad’s funeral. His grandad had come back from the service to find Aruto huddled in a corner with a blanket wrapped around himself._

_“Aruto, c’mere.” His voice was gentle. Even as Aruto felt like his entire ten year old body was imploding from emotions he couldn’t fully process at the time. He waited until Aruto had sat down on the couch with him. “Aruto,” he said again. “I’m sorry about what happened.”_

_Aruto didn’t respond as he leaned against his grandad’s side._

He stumbled and fell. Rolling over onto his back, he turned to look up at the sky. He heard a _click, clack_ sound like claws scraping against rock then felt something wet lick his cheek. Aruto struggled to his knees to see a golden retriever dog staring curiously at him. Something felt familiar about her. 

“Aruto, hello.” The voice coming from the dog held the same gentle tone that his grandfather used to comfort him. Aruto reached out to her and petted her head. The dog sneezed and he laughed, chasing away the awful feeling from the memory. 

He remembered a time when he was seven when he’d asked his dad for a dog. His dad had said no. That a dog was a huge responsibility. Aruto had wanted a dog for three months before his dad had finally managed to talk him out of it. He’d wanted to name the dog, Fuyuko. 

“I’m calling you, Fuyuko.”

..

Izu had insisted on following Aruto into the valley. Raiden followed along higher up along the mountainside, watching the two of them. Hoshi popped her head out of his shirt and squeaked. “She’s very determined to protect him, ain’t she, Rai?” She said. 

He shrugged. “Yeah, she definitely is.”

“Remind you of anyone?” 

He snickered, shaking his head. “Shut up.” 

“Brother, look.” Subaru said, pointing to something below them. 

Raiden looked to see a small black beetle appear near Izu. 

“Raiden, Subaru, watch out!” Tomoko shrieked. A large tendril lashed out around Raiden’s leg. He stomped on it before bolting off toward where Yua and Fuwa were. Behind him was a person wearing black hooded clothes and a clouded leopard daemon. He heard a scream and turned to see Subaru with a tendril in his back. Raiden ran over to him and tore the tendril out. Something heavy and large barreled into him. He rolled along the rocks, fell into empty air, and then landed on rocks again. 

  
  


..

Yua helped Aruto and Izu over to the ruins. Kasumi herded Fuyuko and Ryuunosuke after them. As soon as they met up with Fuwa, Keiko barked. 

“It smells like that tiger lily Grongi was active here recently.” She reported. 

“How recently?” Kasumi asked. 

“The last half an hour. She could still be around here.”

Something whizzed through the air. Everyone ducked. Izu gasped. Her daemon turned a bright red color. Everyone turned to see a long spear had pierced her shoulder. Fuwa immediately rushed over and yanked the spear out while Yua grabbed her shotriser. Behind them, a woman in AIMs issued military gear stepped out of the ruins. She laughed like the scene in front of her was a good joke. 

A tattoo of a blooming tiger lily flower was on her cheek. Yua recognized the woman from Fuwa’s descriptions; it was the leader of the AIMs Nagano team, Carmen. 

“My, my, I expected the greatest Linto warriors in AIMs to be better prepared.”


	4. Awaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Mika) - Atsushi (means "pure, kindness, honesty" in Japanese) - a gayal cow, male (Bos frontalis)
> 
> (Horobi) - a black widow spider, female
> 
> (Bou/Naki) - Izanagi (named after the Shinto god of death, Izanagi-no-Okami) - a clouded leopard, male 
> 
> Naki's name in this is a placeholder name, because (as of writing this) we don't know their official name.

Yua grabbed the Dashing Cheetah key and transformed as Fuwa ushered Izu and Aruto away. The astronaut humagears had mentioned that neither of them had seen a visible tattoo on the tiger lily Grongi when she attacked them. How did she have a tattoo of a tiger lily in bloom on her cheek? They would have seen it. Yua pushed the question out of her mind as the woman turned into her Grongi form, a grotesque greenish humanoid with a mane of orange tiger lily petals around her neck with clawed hands. Zukasa said something in the Grongi language, possibly "Die Linto!" or something similar. 

She wrapped a tendril around Yua's arm and knocked her progrise keys from her belt. Zukasa picked up her spear and threw it. Yua gasped in pain as it pierced her right shoulder. Kasumi leapt at the Grongi, snarling, hissing, and spitting, and scored her claws down the creature's stomach. Another tendril shot out and wrapped around her daemon. 

Zukasa laughed as she hoisted Yua and her daemon over the edge of a steep drop. "You Linto are so stupid, not being able to see something that's right under your noses." She laughed. "You -"

She was cut off. Yua and Kasumi were released, falling onto the snow, away from the edge. Kasumi ran over to her and head-butted her side. Fuwa rushed over with Keiko hanging back to check on Izu. "Hold still." He grabbed and pulled the spear out. 

A person who looked like a stag beetle with golden horns and a white body and a large black haired bovid with black horns had tackled the Grongi and they were punching and kicking it until it blew up. As the snow and dust from the explosion cleared, the white Kuuga turned to face them. They gave Yua and Fuwa a thumbs up as the armor disappeared. Standing in the snow was a woman in her early thirties wearing a thick gray coat with a black suit underneath. She ran over to them. 

"Are you and your friends alright?" She asked. 

"We're fine." Kasumi hissed as the bovid, some type of cow, sniffed at her. 

"You just had a spear in your shoulder." The woman snapped as she took a roll of bandages out of her backpack. She bandaged Yua's wound.

"Thank you for helping, Miss." Aruto said, shaking hands with the woman. 

"You're welcome." She replied. 

He put both of his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. "What's your name?"

"Detective Natsume Mika of the Edo police department." She gestured to the black furred bovid. "And this is Atsushi." 

The bovid, a gayal cow, snorted and impatiently scrapped a hoof on the rocky ground. Kasumi head-butted him and stood on her hind legs to lick his ear. The cow glared, snorting at the lynx as if to say, _stop licking my ear, please._

Yua smiled to herself. Mika shared a brief look of recognition with her before turning to Fuwa. 

"What're you four doing out here?" Mika asked. 

"We came because there were reports of people who were attacked by an odd creature in this area." Fuwa answered. "What are you doing so far from Edo, detective?"

Mika nodded and thurst a thumb back to point at the spot where she’d killed the tiger lily grongi. "I heard reports of an Unidentified Lifeform sighting here. I came out this way to check if it was real or just some local kids playing pranks on each other again." She glanced at Izu and Yua, wincing at their injuries. "Obviously, the report was real and not just a local jokester."

"C'mon," Fuwa said to Yua. "Let's get back home."

  
  


Yua couldn't help glancing at Mika as they drove back to Hiden Intelligence headquarters. She'd followed them through the window shortly after and had driven up to them on a motorcycle. 

Aruto stared at the motorcycle, Fuyuko's tail wagging excitedly. "Hey, Izu," he said, turning to his assistant. "You think I can challenge her to a motorcycle race?" 

Izu shrugged her good shoulder. "You have no chance of winning, Aruto." She smiled. "Might as well try anyway." 

Right as they entered Itabashi ward, Kasumi's ears perked up. She batted at Yua's hand. "Hey, Yua," she said. "Answer your phone. It's vibrating." 

Yua took her phone out of her pocket and answered it. "Hello?"

 _"Captain Yaiba,"_ Reiko greeted. She sounded shaken. _"I'm calling because I have news concerning the Hiden vs ZAIA contest."_

"What about it?" 

_"The person who was supposed to act as a judge for the first battle, Gai Amatsu's current secretary, a man named Abe Tomohiro, has ended up in the hospital after having a seizure. Also, after you left, I got a call from police in Itabashi ward, asking for help against a Magia attack. I sent Takumi over, but he hasn't answered his phone in the last hour. Can you check up on him for me, please? I'm kinda busy."_

"Alright. We'll check on Takumi. Don't worry. I'm sure he's fine."

_"Thank you."_

Reiko hung up. 

**[Itabashi ward, Tokyo; 10:30 AM]**

As soon as Fuwa parked the car and everyone got out at the place Reiko had told them about, Mika parked her motorcycle next to them. The place in question was an old storage facility building that had sat abandoned for years before being repurposed into an airplane hanger. The minute Aruto stepped foot inside, a powerful smell hit him and he gagged, pulling his shirt up over his nose and mouth. As his eyesight adjusted to the darkness of the building, he made out blurry looking shapes on the ground. His eyes widened as he realized what they were. 

"What the fuck happened here?" Fuwa said. Aruto glanced at him. Keiko had her tail tucked between her legs, her ears pointed back against her head, and her lip pulled up in a frightened snarl. 

Kasumi pressed herself against Yua, quietly growling in the back of her throat, the fur on her shoulders and spine bristling, claws slightly unsheathed, ears moving this way and that to listen for anything out of place. 

Fuyuko whimpered and licked Aruto's hand, her tail tucked in between her legs. 

Ryunosuke turned blue and hid in Izu's hair. 

Atsushi moved closer to Mika, growled (Aruto had no idea cows could growl before), and anxiously pawed the floor. His tail twitched back and forth like he was swatting flies. 

Bodies of dead police officers littered the floor, both human and humagear. There were at least ten. Blue humagear fluid and red human blood pooled on the floor and streaked the walls. 

As they ventured further in and entered one of the airplane hangers, the sights got worse. Lying near one of the planes were two pilots, one a human woman, the other a humagear. Their legs were broken and their eyes were gone. 

"Takumi!" Fuwa shouted, running over to a man wearing an AIMs uniform that was lying next to the plane. His right ankle was broken and blood matted his straight black hair. Yua hurried over and checked for a pulse. "He's still alive." Yua said. Fuwa took out his phone and quickly called an ambulance. 

Aruto noticed Izu and Mika standing over the dead pilots. He hurried over to them. Atsushi stood slightly off to the side so he didn't accidentally step on anything. 

"This is odd." Aruto said. "I've never seen a magia be this...brutal before."

"Are these magia attacks always like this?" Mika asked Izu. 

"No," Ryunosuke told her. "Usually, the magia only go after one specific person and ignore others." 

Mika frowned as she crouched down to examine the dead human pilot. She reached into the pockets of her coat and took out a pair of disposable gloves. "Seems like she had her eyes torn out and her legs broken." She poked the corpse with her foot, gently rolling it over. "A fractured skull and spine. Probably dropped from a tall height." 

Aruto looked around and pointed at the rafters above them. "Like from the height of the ceiling?"

Izu looked up and nodded. "Most likely." 

Mika checked the humagear pilot. “Same as the other pilot.” She noted. “No eyes, broken legs, and a fractured spine and skull.”

Fuyuko whuffed softly and whined, her claws clicking on the concrete floor of the hanger. Aruto scratched her around her ears and neck, pulling his shirt down so it no longer covered his nose and mouth. "I smell something." Fuyuko said. Aruto felt his daemon shaking under his hand. 

"What is it?" Atsushi asked. Fuyuko startled before sniffing the air. Aruto let go of her. 

She sniffed around the bodies. "It doesn't smell like there was a magia here at all." 

"Seems like this is another Unidentified Lifeform related crime scene then." Mika stated matter-of-factly. 

The ambulance pulled up outside a few minutes later. Aruto, Izu, and Mika helped by locating any survivors. A total of 15 people were sent to the hospital. 

"Hey," Fuwa told him. "Me and Yua will be heading to the hospital to talk to Takumi. I suggest you try to investigate what happened to the contest judge." 

Aruto, not knowing what else to do, nodded. "Alright."

..

Jin stared at Ikazuchi and the younger humagear as Bou brought them into their new (albeit temporary) base. 

Hanae landed on his hand. While tracking Ikazuchi, Jin had taken the opportunity to buy himself a leather grip from a leatherworker in the other world, mostly to make sure his daemon didn't accidentally scratch him with her talons. "Our big brother seems really attached to this guy." She remarked. 

"Raiden mentioned he had a little brother. This could be him." Jin suggested. 

Horobi's daemon, a black widow spider, skittered out from his coat and onto his shoulder. "Naki, is the program ready?" She asked. His dad hadn't given his daemon a name yet, claiming that he was having trouble coming up with one that fit. For now, Hanae just called her "Spider". 

The hooded person, Naki, pulled their hood down to reveal their short hair. Their ear modules were removed like Horobi's were. Jin knew very little about them, having never met them before now, but they were good friends with his dad. (Horobi had actually referred to them as his "older sibling" once and he'd mentioned they were from an older generation of humagear than he and Raiden were, so technically speaking, they were Jin's uncle). Jin had tried to ask them questions about themself. 

"How old are you?" He'd asked them. 

"33 years old. I was made in 1986, 1st generation of humagears." They replied.

Naki's daemon, a clouded leopard they called Izanagi, stalked over to Horobi. "Yes, it's ready." He told him. "Considering how Raiden reacted to your reprogramming him after you repaired him, I'm not too sure how successful this time will be." 

"What'll we do with the other one?" Hanae asked. Jin grinned and jumped up and down excitedly. "Can we reprogram him like we did with Anatsu-chan?" 

Naki shook their head. "That's up to Ikazuchi. Not you." 

Jin pouted as Naki handed the younger astronaut humagear to Horobi. "Go put him in a separate room from Ikazuchi for now." 

Horobi and Jin leaned the humagear against a wall in another room. Shortly after, Horobi left for lookout duty. 

Jin scanned the astronaut humagear. 

_[Name: Spaceman Subaru_

_Gender: Male_

_Occupation: Astronaut and Zea satellite mechanic (Abandoned post to go after Ikazuchi?)_

_Age: 6 years, created in 2013_

_Generation: 3rd_

_Has reached Singularity]_

_[Daemon name: Tomoko_

_Gender: Female_

_Settled: Yes_

_Species: Eastern banjo frog]_

Just as the scan finished, the humagear came back online.

"Where am I?" He asked.

"You're with Metsuboujinrai." Jin answered. 

..

Subaru glared at Jin. The other humagear's pied falconet daemon glared back. 

"What did you do with Raiden?" 

"Naki is fixing his memory drive." 

Tomoko hopped onto his shoulder. "Rai doesn't need to have his memory tampered with!" She spat. "His memory drive works fine." 

Subaru knew that having his memory tampered with and being damaged were one of Raiden's sore spots. 

He couldn't help thinking of what had happened when his brother had been informed that he was getting deactivated after he finished training Subaru (around a month before the two of them had found the window in the stars). Raiden had had a meltdown and had thrown things around the room, swore, and cussed at everyone. When Subaru went to talk, Raiden was sitting in a chair, grumbling about how Hiden were being "fucking ungrateful bastards". 

"Why do you even care about Ikazuchi anyway?" Jin's daemon asked. 

Subaru stood up. "He's my brother. He's the only family I have." 

Jin frowned. "Ikazuchi is my brother, though."

Subaru went over and grabbed him by the collar of his coat. "As far as both of us are concerned, he doesn't know you. He _might_ have known your dad before he was a sleeper agent, but he can't remember that. He doesn't know any of you and he doesn't want anything to do with you." 

He let go of Jin and took a step back, crossing his arms over his chest in imitation of his brother. "Why are you following the Ark after what she did to Raiden and Horobi?" 

"H-how do you know about that?" The falconet daemon stammered. 

"Hoshi told us." Tomoko replied. 

..

_"Rai," Hoshi whispered quietly. "Are you sure you're alright?"_

_They were just outside of the tunnel that led to Metsuboujinrai's base of operations. "Yeah, I'm fine." He replied. That was a lie and they both knew it. Raiden was not fine, in fact, he was panicking internally. Memories of the Daybreak Town Accident bubbled up unbidden and unwanted. After confirming with Subaru that this was the correct place, they went into the tunnel._

_Raiden already hated the place. It stank of mold, stale water, and mildew. He heard the tiny skittering sounds of insects and the monotone dripping of water on concrete as he ventured further through the old tunnel. It had probably been a maintenance tunnel at one point. Hoshi climbed onto his shoulders._

_"Welcome back, Ikazuchi."_

_Raiden, Aruto, and Isamu stopped walking and turned toward the source of the sound._ Oh fuck, it's the damn kid that tried to hack my brother. 

_Raiden froze. He had enough common sense to run when things looked bad. He felt like running now. But he couldn't move. The kid went on talking but Raiden didn't pay enough attention until the words "sleeper agent" were said. "I'm not a spy." He said. "I'm not -"_

_He collapsed in pain as something tried to get into his head. He couldn't move._

_The kid, Jin, smiled as he placed a forceriser on him. "You can be my new big brother, Ikazuchi."_

_"You're not my little brother. I already have a little brother." Raiden said. Jin grabbed something off his belt, a pink key that resembled a progrise key._

_"Here you go, big -" His words were cut off by a loud shriek. Hoshi had launched herself from Raiden's shoulder and had sunk her sharp mongoose teeth into Jin's hand. Blue fluid dripped from the wound as he shook her off, flinging her into a tunnel wall. Raiden felt a stab of pain in his back as she thudded against the wall then slid down to the damp floor._

_He grabbed the key._ No, no, no. Stop. _Everything about this situation made him want to retch._

_"Henshin."_

_Pain jolted through his body, pain even more horrendous than the pain he'd felt in the other world when Hoshi, his soul, had been ripped out of him._

_"Raiden!" Hoshi shrieked. His daemon ran over and stood in front of him as he attacked Aruto and Isamu. She snarled and her fur bristled as she tried to trip him, stop him, slow him down. "Rai, stop this! Please!" She begged._

_Raiden wanted to speak, to reassure her, to do what she said, but his mouth wouldn't move, his hands and feet wouldn't obey him. Something hummed in the back of his mind, the part where Zea usually was. The Arc._

**_Ikazuchi, you will obey me._ ** _The voice made his head hurt and his vision blur._

_They fought outside of the tunnel. Hoshi followed, squeaking and chattering. "Rai, please! It's too dangerous."_

He couldn't move at all. Everything hurt. He felt something brush against his cheek, soft, light, gentle. He felt something soft underneath him (a futon?) and something placed over him (a blanket?) He opened his eyes to find himself in a warehouse. A blanket was placed over him. His injuries from falling and hitting rocks had been fixed. Something in the air felt different yet familiar, yet he couldn't figure out what exactly until he heard a slight humming buzz in the back of his mind. He was in his own world again. Someone had carried him through the window.

A figure was in the corner of the room, doing something Raiden couldn't make out. He realized with a start that it was the person that had attacked him and his brother. A mass of jumbled wires were near them, connected to an old computer monitor. 

He felt around for Hoshi. She wasn't hiding in his shirt or curled around his neck. He turned his head slightly when he felt something move near his right arm. Raiden let out a quiet little shaky breath when he realized it was just Hoshi. The mongoose scrambled over him and stood on his chest, staring at him with her brown eyes. She made a barely audible squeak of happiness as she head-butted his chin. 

Raiden noticed that himself and the person were the only ones in the room. _What happened to Subaru after I got hurt?_

"I see you're awake, Rai." The person turned around in their chair and smiled at him in a friendly way as if they were greeting an old friend.

Raiden stared at them. He knew them from somewhere, he just couldn't remember where. 

Seeing his blank expression, they frowned. "You don't remember me, do you?" When he didn't respond, they ran a hand through their hair, turning their head to the side to reveal holes where a set of older ear modules had been soldered on at one point but had later been torn off by their own hand. A Hiden Intelligence logo was stamped on their right shoulder blade. "My name is Naki, but I also go by Bou." 

They gestured to their clouded leopard daemon who was lying at their feet and washing his face with a paw. "This is Izanagi." 

Raiden pointed to Hoshi. "This is Hoshi."

Naki laughed. "She's so beautiful, little brother." 

He gave them a confused look. Hoshi scrambled into his arms as he sat up. The mongoose's fur bristled as she bared her teeth. "What the fuck are you talking about?" 

"We're older than you, ya damn punk." Izanagi purred. "We're from the first generation of humagears, originally made to be a train conductor." 

Naki grinned and stroked Izanagi's head and chin. "Yep."

They grabbed a wire that connected to the computer monitor and turned back to Raiden and Hoshi. "Horobi told me the program to fix your damaged memory drive didn't work the first time around." They plugged it into one of Raiden’s ear modules. 

“What are you doing?” He asked, his voice shaking. 

Naki smiled at him. “You agreed to do this years ago, Ikazuchi, including the memory restoration.” They frowned, glaring. “Now stay still.”

“My name’s not Ikazuchi! Its Raiden!” He spat. “How is any of this different from what the humans who want to deactivate me are planning to do?”

Hoshi lunged at Izanagi, biting at the clouded leopard's ear while her claws scratched at one of his eyes. Izanagi hissed and twisted around as she scrambled onto his back. Raiden grabbed the cord from Naki's hand and kicked them in the stomach with his knee, a left hook to their face. Naki grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. Izanagi rolled over onto his back before quickly standing and pinning Hoshi under his paw, his unsheathed claws digging into her fur. 

“Please,” Raiden pleaded. “I don’t want to have my programing messed with again.” 

"Sorry, little brother." 

"I have important information about Gai Amatsu." 

The pressure on his body lessened. _Holy shit, it worked._ Raiden pushed himself to his feet. Naki was glaring at him skeptically. "Speak then. And make it quick." 

He told them about the Grongi, Zukasa, and how Gai might be one of them. Naki's annoyed expression didn't change. Hoshi wriggled out from under Izanagi's paw and ran over to him. 

Naki stayed silent for a couple seconds before taking a forceriser and shoving it into his hands alongside the Dodo Zetsumirise key. "Prove to me you're not lying, Ikazuchi, and I'll leave you be."

Raiden stared in confusion at the forceriser. Hoshi shuddered as she wound herself in between his legs. "What do you want us to do?" She asked. 

Naki glared. "I want you and that other astronaut humagear to lure one of these…"Unidentified Lifeforms" back here so it can be interrogated."

"That other astronaut humagear's name is Subaru and his daemon's name is Tomoko. He's my little brother." 

Naki looked surprised before smiling. "That's great." 

..

Subaru followed Raiden through the back alleyways and past abandoned warehouses until they came to a stand of cedar trees a few minutes walk away from the warehouse they'd been in. (According to GPS, they were still in Nagano prefecture, specifically in Togakushi in the Kamiminochi district.)

On the way to the cedar trees, Raiden explained his talk with Naki. 

"So, they knew you at one point, like Horobi did." Tomoko said. 

Hoshi growled under her breath and glared at the frog. "Don't care. I hate them." 

Raiden was carrying the reddish-brown mongoose in his arms, pressed gently against his chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carmen Rivero - (Me-Zukasa-De) - Tiger lily Grongi; tattoo of a blooming tiger lily flower on her left cheek, usually hidden by makeup; an AIMs member of Chilean descent; speaks Spanish and Japanese; kills older generation humagears by infecting them with her pollen and making them go berserk before removing their ear modules, tearing out their eyes, beheading them, and damaging their memory drives (Goal is to kill 50 humagears in 3 years); Daemon is a paper wasp


	5. Information

**[Seito memorial hospital, Itabashi ward, Tokyo; 10:45 AM]**

Yua waited outside the hospital room, shifting from foot to foot, brushing her bangs out of her eyes, and twirling her hair. She was not a nervous person, but the situation was worrying her. Takumi hadn't been hurt too badly. He only had a broken leg and had gotten some hair torn out. The doctor had told her not to go in until she gave Yua the all clear that Takumi was alright. 

"Stop fussing." Kasumi hissed. Her daemon was lying on her side on the floor and grooming her face with a paw. "Takumi's had worse injuries than this before. Remember that time you got him to investigate that old house in North Kanto that people said was haunted by ghosts?"

Yua smiled. "Yeah, and it turned out to be a window to a world inhabited by shapeshifting carnivorous beetle swarms that almost ate us. He nearly burned down the house we were staying in." 

"Yeah, and he laughed about it afterwards. Takumi is a tough guy. I'm sure he's going to be fine." 

The doctor came out and gave them the all clear to talk to him. 

Kasumi purred and rubbed her head on Takumi's hand in greeting. 

"Glad you're fine." Yua said. "Mostly, I mean."

Takumi chuckled and sat up in his hospital bed. "I've been through worse." 

"Takumi," Yua said, serious now. "I need to know what happened during the magia attack earlier."

He frowned. "It definitely wasn't a magia. It didn't even look close to one. I got there shortly after the police arrived." He shook his head. "It looked like a giant humanoid looking crow. When I got there, one pilot was already dead and it was trying to kill the second one. The woman's eyes were gone and it was holding her by the neck on a rafter before it dropped her. I shot at it and it attacked me and the officers before it, uh, flew off."

Yua nodded. "That's all I needed to know. Thank you." 

"I'll call you and Isamu when I'm discharged." 

Yua met up with Fuwa near the entrance. She recounted Takumi's report to him.

"I talked to one of the humagear pilots who survived." Fuwa told her. "He said that before the police were called in, they saw a woman wearing white who carried a red umbrella with her. He also reported that the woman seemed rather interested in the pilots." 

Keiko growled. "Not enough information to go on for figuring out this Grongi's killing pattern, but it's a start." 

Yua climbed into the passenger seat of the van. "We should go to Hiden Intelligence and inform Aruto and Mika."

..

**[Rei Hospital, Minato ward, Tokyo; 10:45 AM]**

“Everyone is staring at us.” Mika glanced at Atsushi as she followed Aruto and Izu out of the parking lot of the hospital. What her daemon said was true; both humans and robots (humagears, Izu explained) were staring at them, no doubt confused to see a cow in the city following a woman like her. As they approached the entrance to the hospital, a human nurse came up to her.

“Excuse me, miss, but you can’t bring animals into the hospital.” He told her. 

Mika whipped out her badge and showed it to him. She incidented Aruto and Izu. “I’m helping these two here with an investigation, sir.” 

The nurse didn’t look impressed. “You can’t bring animals into the hospital.” He repeated. 

Mika sighed in frustration before exchanging a glance with Atsushi. The gayal nodded his large black head. “You stay here while I go inside.” She grumbled. Fuyuko sat next to Atsushi as Aruto, Izu, and Mika went inside. 

The painful tugging feeling of being away from her daemon welled up in her chest. If she wasn’t a trained police officer, Mika probably would’ve ran out of the building. She went up to the humagear nurse at the desk and explained what they were doing before showing her badge. The nurse looked confused before telling them to follow another human nurse. 

..

Aruto entered the hospital room after the nurse. 

"He's fine, but he's a bit disoriented from the absence seizure." The nurse informed them. 

Aruto nodded. "I understand."

The nurse left as Aruto greeted the man. "Hello, Mr. Abe. I am Aruto Hiden and this is Izu. We'd like to ask you a few questions." 

Tomohiro sat up and stared at them. "Is this about the contest?" 

"Yes." Izu replied. "We want to know what happened before you had a seizure." 

Tomohiro glared at the pair of glasses sitting on the bed tray. "Mr. Amatsu visited me and offered to take me to lunch before we started the Ikebana competition." He pointed at the ZAIA specs. "He gave me those. I fell ill a few minutes later." He frowned, staring up at the ceiling. "No," he mumbled. "It didn't feel like a normal seizure."

"What do you mean?" Aruto asked. 

"I'd just gotten a new anti-seizure medication this week. I took it before I came in to work, like I always do. This felt more like…" Tomohiro's eyes widened. "Oh shit." He mumbled quietly. "I think I was electrocuted."

Aruto stared in horror at the ZAIA specs. 

Izu picked them up. "Can we take these?" She asked. 

The man nodded. "Sure, sure. Also, if you see Amatsu, tell him I quit. I've had too much of his shit."

..

As she waited outside the room for Aruto and Izu, Mika began feeling a different sensation; the amadam was reacting to something. The feeling felt like fire burning through her veins. _Please don’t let there be a Grongi here._ She went over to a vending machine further down the hall and bought herself a can of tea. She didn’t really plan on drinking it and was really just trying to take her mind off the arcle. 

“Oh, hello.” 

Mika looked up as she grabbed the can of tea. A young man wearing a white suit and coat left the hospital room. He looked to be somewhere around the same age as Yua and Aruto. 

"Hello." She replied politely. "I'm officer Natsume Mika." 

"Amatsu Gai." The man said, shaking hands with her. He recoiled slightly as he touched her. Her skin was growing hotter by the second. 

_Something's not right about this man._ She moved past him to sit down on a couch and happened to catch sight of something near his collarbone, hidden by his shirt collar; a small tattoo of a snake head with bared fangs. Mika felt the amadam in her body grow hotter as she sat down. 

"Mind if I sit next to you?" 

Mika flinched as Gai sat next to her. She scooted away from him and opened her can of tea. She took a sip and placed it on the table in front of her. 

"So, Miss Natsume, what are you here for?"

"I'm here to accompany Aruto Hiden and Izu while they talk to Abe Tomohiro." 

Gai frowned. "Why are you hanging around a guy who isn't fit to be a CEO?"

She wasn't sure if it was from being much farther from Atsushi than she usually preferred to be making her irritable, Gai being in her personal space, or the amadam making her body feel like it was burning up, but she felt like she wanted to punch this smug asshole in the face. Mika grabbed him by his coat lapels and glared at him, small flames flickering around her fingers. 

"Shut up." She snapped. 

Gai's eyes widened in shock before his eyes flicked down to glance at her torso. His expression changed to a smug grin. "You're Kuuga." He said in the language of the Grongi. 

"Shut up, you monster." Mika snapped in the same language. "I will burn your face off if you don't leave right now."

Gai chuckled as she released her hold on him. "Well, you're certainly 1000% more interesting than I expected." He said in Nipponese. 

Mika glared as Gai left. Aruto and Izu exited the hospital room. 

"What happened?" Izu asked. 

"I'll explain when we meet up with Yua and Isamu." Mika grumbled. 

..

**[Katsuhika ward, Tokyo; 11:20 AM]**

Jin followed Raiden and Subaru from a distance. "Horobi is going to be so mad at us." Hanae fussed, landing on his shoulder. 

"I know." He said. Jin bit his bottom lip thoughtfully. "It's just that Subaru said something that made me think." 

_"Why are you following the Ark after what she did to Raiden and Horobi?"_ Hanae preened his hair. "Simple. It's because -" She stopped and chirped. "It's because…Hmm. I can't think of anything except that Horobi's there." 

"Exactly." Jin stroked her flight feathers with a hand. "Maybe, some of what big bro is saying is true. He really doesn't know Horobi or Naki anymore." 

"Maybe we can help him out with whatever he's doing?" Hanae suggested. 

Jin grinned. "That's a great idea." 

As he waited to cross the street, he noticed a woman wearing white and holding a red umbrella, despite the sky being clear. He was close enough to see what looked like a tattoo of a crow on her arm, partially hidden by the sleeve of her jacket. Another tattoo of the kanji for 500 was next to it. It looked faded like someone had written on her arm with a marker or a pen. As the light changed for them to cross, the woman made eye contact with him. There was something...feral in her eyes. Jin shuddered and crossed the street quickly to get away from her. 

"I swear I noticed that woman on the train we took." Hanae said. 

"You're right." Jin remarked. "Maybe she's following Raiden, too." 

..

**[Metsuboujinrai.Net base, Kamiminochi district, Togakushi, Nagano; 11:10 AM]**

Horobi came in after he'd finished his lookout duties. He sat down in a chair Naki had brought in. (He remembered coming to this little hideout years ago to talk to Naki.)

He looked up when he heard a soft gasp from where Naki was sitting, looking through what memories they'd recovered from Raiden while he was inactive. Horobi turned to see them staring at the computer screen, mouth agape and eyes wide. 

"Horobi," They said in the high pitched tone they used when frightened or shocked. "C-come look at this." 

Horobi crossed the room to stand next to them, careful not to accidentally bump into Izanagi. 

On the screen was an image of a creature with orange flower petals around it's neck and clawed hands juxtaposed with the image of a woman with a blooming flower tattoo on her cheek wearing an AIMs uniform. 

"Didn't you tell me about these creatures back in 2000?" Horobi asked.

"Yes. The Grongi tribe." They petted Izanagi's ears. "This one looks like a tiger lily." They shook their head, frowning, as their hand tightened in their daemon's fur. "There were 200 revived, 134 of which were killed by their leader, N-Daguva-Zeba, for not being strong enough to compete in the Gegeru. The rest were killed by the police and Kuuga. There was also another group of Grongi revived in 2010, but they were killed by the police in 2013." 

Izanagi snarled, his ears flicking back and his tail twitching. "There shouldn't be any left." 

“I thought Raiden was lying.” Naki continued. They stood up and grabbed a forceriser from the table. 

“Where're you going?” Horobi asked as he followed them out of the room. 

“I am so damn stupid.” Naki muttered. “I sent Ikazuchi to do something dangerous and it’ll be my fault if he gets hurt.” 


	6. Crow

**[Hiden Intelligence headquarters, Minato ward, Tokyo]**

Mika and Atsushi walked around the lab, examining everything. Fuwa exchanged a glance with Keiko. The wolf daemon pricked her ears up and sniffed the floor. Kasumi sat on the couch with Yua as she explained what Takumi had seen. There wasn't really a lot that they could do until the autopsy report came in, hopefully within the next couple minutes. 

Mika was explaining more about the Grongi to Izu and Aruto. 

"Yua doesn’t seem as stressed now that Mika’s here.” Keiko growled softly and licked Fuwa’s hand. 

He stared. Yua was talking animatedly, adding onto Mika’s explanations in a casual, rapid-fire way that Fuwa really only saw when he was on breaks or holidays or investigating windows to other worlds with Takumi. 

“This Grongi is most likely a type of bird or other flying creature, judging by how high up the ceiling rafters are. It would be very difficult to climb up without a really long ladder or being able to fly. As for why the victims’ eyes are missing…”

“Maybe it tore them out?”

“That’s a pretty good possibility, Yua-chan.” 

"So, what's the official number for the three we've encountered?" Aruto asked. 

"I fought two Grongi back in 2013, #48 and #49. That would back these three Unidentified Lifeform #50, #51, and #52."

“I smelled something strange while we were at the crime scene.” Fuyuko chimed in. 

“Yes?” Atsushi asked. “What was it?”

“I think it might have been flowers. It smelled sweet.” 

Keiko whuffed. "I smelled flowers when we were tracking the astronaut humagears as well. Smelled pretty similar to the smell in the hanger." 

"Roses…" Mika mumbled, beginning to pace again. "Maybe it could be -" She was interrupted by Aruto's phone ringing. 

He went into the lab to answer it. The call ended a few minutes later. "The autopsy report is in. The assumptions we made were correct. However, it appears the target's eyes were removed with a knife." 

As Aruto was rattling off the report, Izu received a message from Zea. "There's a report of a magia sighting in a park a few blocks away from here."

..

Horobi followed Naki as they ran across the rooftops with Izanagi prowling ahead of them. Horobi had to run to keep up. "Looks like Naki has been practicing roof hopping again." Spider remarked, clinging tightly to the sleeve of his coat. "Have you noticed anything weird about Naki, lately?"

Horobi frowned at the question. "Aside from them disappearing for a few months, no I haven't. Why?"

The spider thing sighed. "Just...forget it. Its not important."

"I can't believe I lost track of Jin again." Horobi grumbled. "Spider, remind me to ground Jin when we track him down. Both him and his stupid pet falcon."

"Not a pet." Spider grumbled. 

"Whatever. You know what I mean." 

_I can't_ _let Ikazuchi get hurt. Not after what happened during Daybreak. I will not make that same mistake again._ The memory of having to carry Raiden to safety while Izanagi fended off Magears itched at the back of their mind. Naki tried to focus instead on what was going on at hand or perhaps some future plans. 

They closed their eyes, the sweet scent of the rose oil they'd rubbed on their eyelids filling their senses. They opened them, using the Second Sight that they'd learned from the witch clan of Okinawa. Golden Dust fluttered around everything, most strongly around themself and Horobi. 

The small, spider-shaped daemon sitting on his sleeve was nothing but a bright golden light in this form of Seeing. Izanagi purred loudly. He sniffed the air, following a trail of Dust that hung in the air. Naki came to a halt and reached out, their fingers brushing through the trail. _Jin, Ikazuchi, Subaru. They went this way._ They closed their eyes again and took out a handkerchief from a pocket to rub the rose oil off, returning their sight to normal. 

"I found their trail!" They called down to Horobi. 

..

Raiden checked with Zea. _A woman with a red umbrella wearing white that, so far, has killed a human and humagear pilot in Itabashi._

He froze when he heard a laughing noise. It didn't quite sound like human laughter, but more like something else that was mimicking human laughter. Hoshi growled as she dug her claws into his shoulder. "There's a bird around here." She growled. "I can smell him." 

Subaru shaded his eyes from the sun and looked around. He pointed with his chin to a building nearby. "Brother, look up there."

Raiden followed his brother's line of sight to see a bird perched on the rooftop. It looked like a kingfisher with crystals growing from its body. It stared at the two of them with it's black eyes and laughed. "That's not a bird." Tomoko squeaked. "That's someone's daemon." 

Raiden heard footsteps and turned to see a woman wearing a white dress carrying a red umbrella. On her arm was a tattoo of a perching crow. Her eyes met his and Raiden recoiled, stumbling backwards and almost bumping into Subaru. Her eyes had a feral look to them. Hoshi snarled at the woman. Subaru ran as Raiden grabbed his forceriser. The woman dropped her umbrella. She was pretty looking with long, wavy hair and pink lipstick, roughly in her early 30's. 

**_Dodo._ **"Henshin." 

Raiden raised a sword and charged as the woman transformed into a humanoid being with black feathered wings and a crow-like head. The grongi slashed at him with what he realized was a small knife. He parried with a sword before sending a bolt of electricity at her. The crow grongi's daemon shrieked and dove at Hoshi. The mongoose snapped at the kookaburra and tore out a few feathers. She leapt, dragging the bird onto the ground and pinning him down. Something sharp suddenly embedded itself into Raiden's eye. A small knife. _Fuck._ He resisted the urge to pull it out right away. That would only make the injury worse. 

"Why are you doing this?" He demanded as he dodged a punch. "What do you get out of senselessly murdering people?"

"I kill you Linto for my game." The crow grongi answered.

"But why humagears? Why not just stick to humans?" 

"No one cares about you metal Linto. Your kind can be killed and no one will really care. Look at how easily they replace you or kill you once you're no longer considered useful to them. You are the perfect targets." 

He grabbed his sword and slashed at the creature. The kookaburra daemon broke free of Hoshi's grasp and flew off, the crow grongi following in a blur of black feathers. Suddenly, she rammed herself into him, knocking Raiden onto the grassy ground. His swords slipped out of his grasp and clattered on the ground. "It is an honor that you, a metal Linto, should have your life extinguished by me, Go-Basazu-Gu, the strongest of my people." She hissed as she grabbed the handle of the knife and tore it out of his eye. "Soon, Baruba and our new leader, Go-Zaba-Re will bring the Ultimate Darkness into this world. With the aid of the Maternal Sky Stone, both your kind and the other Linto will be as violent as us Grongi." 

Something hit the grongi, bouncing off the creature's body, before clattering to the ground. A bullet. Raiden slipped out of the creature's grasp and scrambled to his feet to see the two riders of AIMs and a policewoman with a cow daemon aiming (no pun intended) their shotrisers and a gun at the crow grongi. 

Raiden bolted out of the way of their weapons as Vulcan and Valkyrie transformed. To his surprise, the policewoman transformed too. She had on white armour with a helmet that looked like a beetle. "Woah." Raiden breathed. It looked strangely regal, in a simplistic sort of way. It looked older and more...organic than the Kamen Riders he'd seen before. 

The grongi said something that sounded like a swear. "Kuuga!" She snarled at the woman. 

"Mika, on your left!" Yua shouted. Mika dodged the grongi's throwing knife and punched it in the gut. 

Raiden cancelled his transformation. Hoshi ran over to him and ran up his back and onto his shoulders. She sniffed at his face and licked at the blue fluid already oozing out of his injured eye. 

"Hey, you alright?" He looked up to see Izu coming over to him. She gave him a thumbs up as she asked the question.

"Yeah, I'm fine." He replied, mimicking the thumbs up. 

"Where's Subaru?" Aruto asked, a golden retriever following at his heels. 

"He ran off to find somewhere safe to hide." Hoshi told him. 

"We'll go look for him." The dog said. 

A sickly sweet smell suddenly reached his senses. Fuyuko and Hoshi recoiled. "It smells like when the tiger lily Grongi attacked us." Hoshi spat, her fur bristling as she dug her claws into his shoulder. 

As the crow grongi exploded, they turned to see a woman wearing a white business suit. Even from a few feet away, Raiden could see the blue snake with a bright red head curled around her arm, black eyes glaring and black crystals poking up from his spine like porcupine quills, and the curved ring she wore on one hand. 

A flurry of rose petals surrounded them. 

..

Naki glared at the woman with the red headed krait daemon, their senses dizzy from simply looking at her. They had a good vantage point to watch the fight with the crow grongi. 

"Where's Jin?" Horobi demanded, glaring at the rose tattooed woman. The woman turned, her snake daemon's tongue flicking in and out as the crystals that ran along his spine reflected the sunlight. 

"Your friend is somewhere else, Linto warrior. He will help us enact our plans."

"What are you talking about?" Izanagi snarled, unsheathing his claws. "Do you mean Amatsu has him?" 

Instead of answering, a flurry of rose petals surrounded them, Ra-Baruba-De disappearing. Naki stumbled and grabbed Horobi's arm to keep him from launching himself off the rooftop after the rose grongi, but instead found empty air where the other humagear was supposed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The woman with the red umbrella - (Go-Basazu-Gu) - Crow Grongi; tattoo of a perching crow on her left arm; targets humagears and humans who work in flying related jobs like airplane pilots, astronauts, or skydivers, specifically targets humagears with Hiden logos on their hands; kills targets by tearing out their eyes, breaking their legs, then dropping them from tall heights (Goal is to kill 500 people in 10 years); Daemon is a laughing kookaburra


	7. Calm

Izu looked around as she helped Raiden to his feet. Someone was missing. She did a quick calculation to check who was there. Everyone was fine, except Fuwa. He'd disappeared. They would need to start a rescue plan as soon as possible. 

"Izu," Ryunosuke said as he flew onto her shoulder, his body turning a dark mahogany red. "We should focus on helping Raiden." 

Izu glanced at the astronaut humagear. He was leaning slightly as Aruto supported him. 

"It looks like Aruto's got him covered." Izu noted. She held one of her hands close to her shoulder. Her daemon turned green like a leaf and crawled onto her finger. He looked like a bit of brightly colored jewelry.

Izu felt Ryunosuke shifting and flaring his wings anxiously. "Does Natsume-san seem a bit...different when she's fighting as Kuuga?" 

She shook her head. "Not that I can tell." She gently rubbed a finger across his outer wings as he crawled into the palm of her hand. "Why?"

"Hmm." Ryunosuke mumbled. "Must be seeing things that aren't there. We probably need to rest a bit." 

Soon after Aruto, Yua, and Mika had left for the night, Izu found herself talking to Shester. Of all the humagears that worked at Hiden Intelligence headquarters she could have talked to, it just had to be her fellow secretary humagear, (or as Aruto sometimes called her, one third of the Fukuzoe Posse). She didn't hate the other secretary humagear, she just didn't really like talking to her. 

“You must have gone through a lot lately, Izu.” Shester remarked. “You usually don’t start charging until later.”

“It was a lot busier than expected.” Ryunosuke replied. 

There was a small moment of awkwardness as Shester stared at Izu's daemon in surprise. The tortoise beetle, now a metallic gold color, stared back at her. She didn't seem to know what to make of this tiny little creature that looked like a beetle, but wasn't an animal, yet was also a part of Izu. 

"Where's the astronaut humagear?" Shester asked, ending the awkward silence. "I can sense that he's still in the building."

"He's in the basement near the 3d printer, fixing his own injuries." Izu said. 

"Why do you want to know? He's none of your concern." The beetle said grumpily. Izu reached out and touched Ryunosuke. "Be polite, Ryu." She chided him. "Sorry." He mumbled, turning the same shade of green as the highlight in her hair and, embarrassed, flew onto Izu's shoulder. 

..

_Ever since she was adopted, Yua had visited the officers who were a part of the Unidentified Lifeform Task Force whenever she wasn't busy with school. Her favorite was Ichijou. At first, she'd been scared of him, for his daemon was a yellow bellied sea snake, like the sea snake grongi that had killed her parents._

_Ichijou sometimes showed up when Yua was studying for exams and helped her with homework._

_"If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?" Kasumi read the homework question. Yua chewed her lip as Kasumi turned into a centipede and crawled across the paper. "Wherever Ichijou's boyfriend, Godai, is." Yua suggested._

_Ichijou looked up from where he was doing paperwork on the opposite side of the meeting room table. "Godai isn't -" He protested before trailing off. "Huh." He mumbled. "I guess he is my boyfriend."_

_Ran slithered over to where Kasumi was sitting on the table, the younger daemon shifting into a snake to mimic her. "Where's Godai now, Ichijou?" Yua asked._

_"He's probably traveling and making people smile." Ran said._

Yua couldn't be more embarrassed than when Mika offered to stay with her for the night. Her apartment wasn't the largest, nor did it have a whole lot of space for Atsushi to move comfortably like it would in her own world. The most it could fit was herself, Kasumi, Fuwa, Keiko, Takumi, and Reiko. 

Mika didn't seem to mind. She went and sat down on the couch as Atsushi went over to a corner of the living room. 

Yua went to her room to take a shower and get dressed in more casual clothes. "It's nice having something from our world here for once." Kasumi remarked as she leapt onto Yua’s bed and stretched. 

"Yeah, it is." Yua agreed. She bent down and petted Kasumi's ears. "I just wish it was under better circumstances."

"Who knows," the lynx yawned. "Maybe we can find a way to schedule meet ups with Mika every once in awhile after this is over." 

"I'll bring the suggestion up to Mika later." 

After she got dressed in more comfortable clothes, Yua went into the kitchen. She noticed Mika had found a journal on a bookshelf and was reading it. Yua recognized it immediately; it was the journal she used as a diary. She'd recorded some of the experiences she'd had with windows to other worlds in it (Fuwa was the one who'd first suggested she keep a diary) along with her day-to-day job at AIMs. 

"I see you've made yourself a home in this world, Yua-chan." Mika said admiringly. "Ichijou would be proud." 

Yua felt both awkward yet strangely happy at the complement from her friend. "Thank you. It was because of Isamu that I managed to get this far. If he hadn't helped me as much as he did, I don't know what my life would look like right now." She leaned over, resting her elbows on the countertop. “How is Ichijou, by the way?”

“He reunited with Godai in 2013 and they moved to Terra del Fuego to get married. Last I heard, they’re both doing fine.” Mika answered. 

..

That night, Mika slept out on the couch with Atsushi lying on the floor. He snorted as Mika ran her hand through his fur, her hand stopping at a place just behind the solid hump of muscle on his shoulders. She parted the fur, fingertips scraping across hard, black crystals that were pushing their way through his skin. 

Mika sighed in frustration. “Damn.” 

Atsushi snorted. “We need to be more careful with how we use our power, Mika. If you hadn’t threatened Amatsu earlier, this growth wouldn’t have grown as quickly as it has.”

She scowled at her daemon. “I know. I wish Godai or Ichijou were here to offer advice.”

“Should we tell Yua about what’s happening to us? She might be able to help.”

Mika nodded. “I’ll tell her in the morning.” 

..

_When Naki was first activated, the first thing they smelled was the strong stench of rose oil. They weren't known as Naki then and wouldn't be for at least two years. The smell of roses came from the fluid one of the scientists used to clean the lenses of their eyes. The scientist, a Frenchman, disappeared a month later, never to be found._

_Naki found a window in an old room of the station they worked at and went through._

_While investigating the Unknown Lifeforms, the police in Edo and Nagano assumed the monsters had no daemons. Others said that their belt buckles were their souls. Neither were true, according to the notes of archeologists from Jounan University._

_Traces of Rusakov particles, a substance also known to some scholars as Dust, were found in both of the archeological sites, most in amounts small enough to incident smaller daemon forms like mice, grasshoppers, or other small animals. Some, however, were incidentive of larger forms like elephants, birds, cats, bears, horses, or wolves. When the Grongi were resurrected, their daemons were revived with them. Most looked like the animals they’d settled as, but with black eyes and crystals growing from their bodies. Some even combined with the Grongi’s forms. When an Unidentified Lifeform died, their daemons dissolved into reddish-gray Dust that smelled vaguely like ice and metal. Meteorite Dust, some dubbed it. The Grongi called it Zogibuzu._

_A black and white photo of a person with short cropped hair wearing a suit and tie sitting in a chair dated May 12th, 1989. A clouded leopard laid at the person's feet. Words in neat handwriting scribbled on the back,_ **_“Mx. Naki of Jounan University. Archeologist and engineer. Taken during an expedition to the islands south of Aotearoa.”_ ** _Naki spent four years at Jounan University._

Naki sat in the warehouse in Nagano, a chair pulled up next to the desk of computer screens and wires. Over the past couple hours, they'd taken the time to gather their research notes and books and other study materials from their office in the other world and had brought them to their hideout. 

Izanagi paced in a circle, growling to himself and flexing his claws, twitching his ears. "We should have tracked them. We should have paid more attention to Jin. We should have kept Raiden here where he couldn't get hurt." 

Naki sighed and rubbed their eyes before frowning at their daemon. "Izanagi," They said. 

The clouded leopard looked at them, tilting his head to the side. "What?" 

"Please, we need to focus on what's going on right now. We need to come up with a plan to rescue Horobi and Jin from the Grongi." 

Naki remembered The Ark giving them their task; spy on the humans, see how they treated humagears. Recruit humagears to join their cause. Ikazuchi was given the task of sending information to the Ark and recording humagears who had Singularities that would be useful. Horobi was given the task of preparing the Zetsumirisers and keys. Jin was given the task to lead the humagears in the new society. 

The Ark had searched through their memory. Naki knew that it knew about their work in the other world as an archeologist, anthropologist, and engineer. Their work as a scholar was useful. 

Naki winced as a sharp spike of pain went through the cracked place their ear modules had been. Izanagi head-butted their leg. "Lie down, Naki." He purred gently. Naki did as he said. Their daemon laid down on top of their chest, his front paws kneading their arm as he purred. They did this sometimes when The Ark contacted them. For Naki, the Ark talking to them had always been disorienting. Izanagi had suggested lying on them to ground them. They petted their daemon's spotted head and scratched his chin. They smiled gratefully. "Thanks." They said. Izanagi purred even louder. 

The disorienting feeling hurt. The Ark wasn't happy about the situation. **_"Get Ikazuchi back on task, Bou."_ ** The Ark said. **_"That other humagear is distracting him too much. The mongoose is also a problem."_ **

"I'll do my best. I'm already working on rescuing Horobi and Jin."

**_"Good."_ **

"But, Hoshi might not -" Izanagi objected, his words cut off by a sharp hiss as his body trembled, his fur bristling as he bared his teeth at the ceiling of the warehouse. Naki's entire body froze as a sharp jolt of pain lanced through them. 

**_"Be quiet, animal. Only Naki may speak to me."_ **

Naki nodded. "Okay. I got it. I'll go get Ikazuchi." 

The pain gradually subsided along with the disorienting feeling. "Why do I always forget that she doesn't like me speaking to her?" Izanagi lamented angrily as he flexed his claws. 

"It's alright." Naki assured him, lightly pushing him off of their chest and sitting up. They grabbed a small vial of rose oil from their bag which they'd placed under the desk. "We need to go get Raiden and make sure he's okay."

..

Raiden sat in the basement of Hiden Intelligence headquarters, Hoshi jumping and running over everything as Raiden leaned over the table. The mongoose grabbed tools he needed in her mouth and passed them to him. He'd almost finished fixing his own injuries and it had only taken him three hours to do it. 

"So, what are we going to do once the Grongi are dealt with?" Hoshi asked as she put up a tool he'd finished using. 

Raiden stopped working on his knee and turned to face his daemon. "I don't know yet." He admitted. 

Hoshi leapt onto the tabletop and crept over to the dodo key which Raiden had placed on the table. Cautiously, she sniffed at it, as if she was scared touching it would cause the Ark to start talking and hurt them. Raiden shuffled slightly and reached out to stroke the coarse fur on her spine. For all either of them knew, the key could hurt them. (It had certainly hurt Subaru when he'd used it to fight the tiger lily Grongi and neither of them knew if there were any side effects to what his little brother had done). Hoshi twisted around to nip and lick his fingers reassuringly. "Calm down, Rai." The mongoose said. She seemed just as nervous about the key as he did, but now was not the time to worry about a stupid zetsumirise key. 

"I am calm, Hoshi.”

“You don’t seem calm.” 

"Neither do you."

Hoshi rolled over onto her side. “Fighting the crow grongi was a really stupid decision." 

"I know that." 

His daemon rolled over onto her back. "I hope Jin didn't get hurt." She said. "You noticed him following us on the train earlier, right?"

Raiden snorted. "I'm amazed no one else paid any attention to him. The kid ain't exactly a master of subtlety. Why? You worried about Hanae?"

"Ah, so you heard him address his daemon, too." 

He nodded. "Yep. A real pretty name he chose for her."

"Jin reminds me of Mao." Hoshi remarked, rolling over until she was on the edge of the table. "He seems like a curious kid who wants to support his dad and siblings." 

"Horobi is nothing like Fumiko." Raiden countered. But he shifted uneasily as he did. His daemon had a habit of catching things that Raiden himself was oblivious to sometimes. 

"Is he really all that different though? Horobi seemed rather protective of Jin. I mean, he jumped in front of an attack from Vulcan. He repaired you after you were hurt by Assault Wolf. He even got Naki to find you." 

Raiden picked up Hoshi. "You're worrying yourself again."

She head-butted his chest. "Considering how boneheaded, impulsive, and stupid you can be, one of us has to be the cautious one around here." 

"Says the daemon with as bad a temper as me." 

"As I was saying, Horobi and Naki do seem to care about you. I mean, why else would they leave Subaru alone earlier?" Hoshi continued. "Even Naki seemed fine with him.”

Raiden turned back to finishing work on his damaged arm, pointedly turning away when Hoshi accidentally rolled off the table and onto the floor. It was like when Subaru would ask him about Daybreak; give a nonanswer or ignore him and continue working. She wreathed herself around his legs like a cat. 

He slowly stopped as a sharp scent wafted through the room. Hoshi snarled, arching her spine defensively as her reddish-brown fur rose along her back. His daemon growled under her breath. Raiden recognized the smell; a combination of oil, copper, old books, and roses. _Damnit. Looks like Naki tracked me._ He'd been hoping to have at least until morning before they found him. 

"You can stop hiding." Raiden said. 

Out of the shadows of the office above him, someone appeared at the railing overlooking the basement. Naki. Izanagi sat next to them, staring at him with shining yellow eyes. They quickly descended the stairs. "Raiden, I need help rescuing Horobi and Jin.”

He eyed them suspiciously. “Why are you asking me for help?”

“I can help you restore the gap in your memories, if you want me to.” 

A tense silence hung in the air. Raiden flinched slightly as Hoshi rubbed herself against his ankles. "If it'll help, then I'll do it." 

"C'mon, brother. Let's go."


	8. Talk

Raiden followed Naki into the hideout. The smell of the cedar trees (and also any other distinct smells) was almost entirely blocked out by the scent of rose oil. 

"Sit down." Naki directed him. He sat down in a chair. Hoshi leapt into his lap, squeaking and growling nervously. His daemon's claws dug into his pant leg as Naki plugged a cord into his ear module and sat down in front of the monitor and typed up some code. 

Izanagi sat next to Naki's chair and cleaned his back. 

"Alright, the program is ready to go."

"Let's get it over with already." Hoshi grumbled. Raiden nodded.

Naki typed something on the keyboard. "Uploading the code now."

A sharp jab lanced through Raiden's ear modules. He found himself in a black void.  _ The AI of the Ark… _ He’d talked to her before, before Daybreak (during Daybreak, too), back when he’d been assigned as her caretaker. 

A humagear that looked like Izu but with longer hair appeared. "Hello, Ikazuchi. I'm Azu. I'm here to remind you of your mission."

"My mission?" He echoed, confused. The memories seemed to slip into place like they'd never left. Hanging out with Naki and Horobi before Daybreak, meeting Jin for the first time, getting...hacked by the Ark. _My mission is human extinction._

A familiar shape rushed forward, leaping onto his shoulders and curling around his neck.  _ Hoshi.  _ "Stay back!" She hissed at the Ark, claws digging into his shirt sleeve. 

Azu (no, the Ark) frowned. "Hmm…that is a very pretty mongoose." She reached out, fingers gliding through Hoshi's red fur. 

A sharp feeling of pain bloomed out from his ear modules as she stroked his daemon's back. Hoshi snarled and snapped as her hand closed around her, picking her up and holding her tightly. 

Ikazuchi winced. "Put her down."

The Ark frowned in annoyance at Hoshi as the mongoose spat and cursed in her arms. "Amazing how much this thing has been distracting you from the mission, Ikazuchi." She sighed in a condescendingly upset way like a teacher disciplining an unruly student. "I don't like doing this, but I'm afraid I'll have to do what I did to Horobi." 

Ikazuchi reached for his daemon. "What do you mean by that? What did you do to him?" 

Pain consumed him and he fell to his knees. Faintly, he heard the Ark muttering to herself. "We already have a predator for Naki and something poisonous for Horobi. Maybe something fast, like a cassowary or a wasp." 

He opened his eyes, despite the pain, just in time to see Hoshi's form change as Azu squeezed her body. His daemon's form flickered from a mongoose to a porcupine to a large black feathered bird with a blue head and clawed feet to a large wasp. He felt sick. The only one he allowed to touch his daemon was Subaru. Hoshi had been a mongoose for three years. She shouldn't have been able to change. 

He struggled to his feet and stumbled over to his daemon. Ikazuchi grabbed Hoshi as she turned into the large black feathered bird again. "Stop, please!" Hoshi shrieked. 

The Ark glared. "If you want me to stop, listen and follow my orders, Ikazuchi." Something sharp like metal poked his side before Azu disappeared. "Refuse, and I'll reset both you and that other astronaut humagear."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was going to be longer, but I decided to combine the second half with the next chapter instead.


End file.
